the tragedy

Leo had gone on a school-organized flight to Egly—nothing to do with Liam’s company. But halfway over Lake Asha, the aircraft vanished from radar. Emergency crews found the wreckage the next morning, scattered across the hills of Fres.

No survivors.

The official report said mechanical failure. Weather issues. A tragic accident. But Liam had taught Leo how to check engines. And something about the crash didn’t sit right with him.

Then he got the call.

A former colleague, now working in aviation security, told him the hangar logs had been doctored. Someone had tampered with the aircraft days before it took off. Someone with a grudge.

Liam’s heart broke—and then hardened.

He began investigating. Quietly. Ruthlessly. He paid bribes, pulled favors, followed whispers. All clues led to one man—Wycliffe, Liam’s cousin, a failed mechanic who once worked for Stones Aviation before being dismissed for theft. He’d blamed Liam for his misfortune. Said the business should have been “a family thing.” He’d also been at the same hangar just days before the fatal flight.

Liam confronted him one night, under the cover of darkness, in an empty field outside Muru.

“I lost everything,” Wycliffe hissed. “And you just kept flying.”

Liam pulled the gun without hesitation.

One shot. Clean. Silent.

Wycliffe fell backward into the tall grass

The night after Wycliffe’s death was eerily calm.

No sirens. No investigation. No headlines. Just silence.

Liam drove home, hands shaking. He didn't sleep. He sat in the hangar beneath the wing of his first plane—now stripped for parts—and stared at the faded photograph of Leo taped to his dashboard.

"I killed your killer, my son," he whispered. "But why does it still hurt?"

It wasn’t enough. Wycliffe hadn’t acted alone.

Liam remembered the suspicious phone calls Wycliffe had made, the cryptic messages unearthed from his laptop before Liam destroyed it. There were names—family names. Blood names. The very people who had once celebrated Leo’s birth, clapped at his school plays, and praised Liam’s resilience after the scandal.

It hadn’t just been jealousy. It had been a conspiracy.

They wanted him ruined. Out of the way. Some believed Stones Aviation should’ve belonged to the family, not to “the golden son” who made it out while they scraped coins in the fields. They resented his redemption, feared his return to prominence. And they used the one thing that still gave his life meaning—Leo—to remind him that his bloodline, his legacy, was not safe.

And so Liam made a list.

1. Aunt Tabitha – the matriarch\, whisperer of poison.

2. Kefa – the schemer\, Wycliffe’s brother\, who once tried to forge transfer papers for the hangar land.

3. Naomi – the quiet cousin\, who handled logistics and "accidentally" sent Leo’s flight details to the wrong engineer.

Three names. Three deaths.

He began with Aunt Tabitha. She still lived in the old stone house in Kiambu, where Liam had spent childhood holidays drinking porridge and listening to folktales. He visited her under the guise of reconciliation.

“I miss the old days,” he said over tea. “When family didn’t betray one another.”

Tabitha raised an eyebrow. “You always were dramatic.”

Liam smiled, dropped two crushed Oleander seeds into her tea, and watched her sip.

She died two days later. Heart failure, the doctors said. A peaceful death, they assumed. Liam felt no peace.

Next came Kefa.

He was trickier—paranoid and violent. He ran a matatu business in Eands and had connections to the local police. Liam staged it like a robbery. He waited near the depot late at night, wearing a ski mask and wielding a wrench.

The attack was brutal. The cameras were disabled. No suspects were identified.

Kefa’s death made the papers.

And the whispers started.

Naomi went into hiding.

Liam tracked her to Masa, living under a different name. She’d grown thin, nervous. Her apartment was bare. He found her weeping at her doorstep one night.

“I didn’t want him to die,” she said when she saw him.

“You still helped them,” Liam replied.

She dropped to her knees. “Please… I have children.”

Liam hesitated.

He left that night without saying another word.

But Naomi was found dead in her bed a week later—an overdose. Whether it was guilt or poison, no one ever knew. Not even Liam.

The deaths shattered the family. At first, they believed it was coincidence—fate. But rumors swirled like vultures over a carcass.

“Liam is cursed.”

“He’s a killer.”

“He’s lost everything.”

And it was true.

Stones Aviation collapsed within months. Sponsors pulled out. Clients avoided the scandal. One pilot quit after finding Liam crying in the cockpit, whispering Leo’s name.

Esther, the nurse who once saved him, came to check on him. She found him living inside the hangar, surrounded by beer bottles, Leo’s clothes still folded neatly in a locker.

“I thought flying would save me,” he told her.

Esther’s eyes welled up. “Liam, there’s no one left to fight.”

“There’s me.”

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